AT HOME : GARDENING : Green Thumb Smarts : The West Valley Occupational Center course in Woodland Hills is designed to turn amateur gardeners into professionals through lectures and hands-on work.
Good gardeners are made, not born, but it needn’t take years to master the art of clipping, spading and pruning an unruly back yard. The L.A. Unified School District’s West Valley Occupa tional Center in Woodland Hills offers a landscaping course that can turn any would-be green thumb into a pro in 20 weeks--and for a mere $30.
Combining classroom study with hands-on work in the center’s own garden, the program--called Landscaping and Nursery Occupations--qualifies graduates to take the city of Los Angeles’ exam for municipal gardeners.
“Our mandate,” says course instructor Joshua Siskin, “is to prepare people for the workplace. They leave here knowing how to install gardens and keep them healthy.”
They also know how to propagate plants any number of ways, address them by their Latin names, prescribe remedies for what ails them and shower them with custom-designed sprinklers.
A typical 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. landscape instruction session begins with a lecture in a quaint, drafty classroom at the heart of the Occupation Center demonstration garden.
Furnished with wood-topped tables and posters spelling out the “Insect Life Cycle” and the “Anatomy of a Tomato,” the room is reminiscent of the bygone days when the program had agricultural leanings and its students got to ride on tractors.
Siskin, a modern man with a master’s degree in horticulture from UC Davis, interacts energetically with students as he holds forth on fertilizers, pest control and soil preparation.
With the help of his assistant, Blaine Levey, who has a certificate in horticulture and gardening from UCLA Extension, Siskin covers the blackboard with lists, fires questions at his audience and dashes outside to pick plants whenever a point needs illustration.
Though the class atmosphere is informal, everyone has a notebook out. Participation is heavy among the 20 or so students who include hobbyists as well as careerists, and who range in age from their late teens to their 70s.
But the group really comes alive when it moves outside--to the lush, three-acre teaching landscape that features water ponds, towering trees, vegetable beds, an orchard, a xeriscape garden and more than 500 species of plants.
“This is the best part--the technical stuff,” says Philip Basile of Granada Hills, a former GM employee who has sought retraining in landscaping in the wake of the Van Nuys plant closing. “Anyone can push a lawn mower. Here, we get our hands dirty learning to put sprinklers in and prune trees.”
Enhancing the hands-on experience are plant identification walks and field trips to such horticultural centers as the Theodore Payne Foundation in Sun Valley.
While some students use these opportunities simply to polish their weekend gardening skills, the course maintains its vocational emphasis throughout, providing anyone interested with a steady stream of job referrals through an on-campus employment office.
Some students--like Adrienne Dumenigo of Woodland Hills--land work even before their 20-week session ends, earning a beginning wage of between $8 and $15 an hour. Dumenigo, a former dog groomer, now does expert maintenance for a Los Angeles garden designer.
Siskin, who has taught at the Occupational Center for three years, hopes his program will eventually play a larger role in the community--through volunteer landscaping projects that would double as learning vehicles for students.
He also wants to respond more to the needs of those already working in the industry.
On Feb. 3, for the benefit of Latino gardeners hampered by a lack of fluency in English, he’ll begin teaching a weekly evening class in residential landscaping that will be given in Spanish and repeated in English.
“In this field,” says Siskin, “we need to be a clearinghouse for information and training. Things change fast in what we do. There’s always something new out there.”
Where and When Location: West Valley Occupational Center, 6200 Winnetka Ave., Woodland Hills. Classes: “Landscaping and Nursery Occupations” is offered from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. “Planting and Care of Residential Landscapes” is offered from 6:30 to 9:30 on Wednesday nights. Price: Fee for daytime class is $30; fee for night class is $26. Both classes last 20 weeks. Enrollment: If space permits, anyone age 16 or older may enroll in the landscaping classes any time during the session, which begins Feb. 1. Call: (818) 346-3540; the phone is answered from 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays, till 4:30 p.m. Fridays. To hire a student gardener, call the main number and ask for the employment office.
